Somewhere in the modern era a definition of beauty was lost. Especially in new media art, artists associate beauty with the creation of simple visual “prettiness”. As if aesthetics are something shallow which should not be part of the equation when designing technological systems.
In the meantime offline art has become simplified to commodity, decoration and private possession while audiences are left to the mercy of a poorly designed pop culture. My standpoint is that beauty is a language that communicates to entire cultures and should be shared with the masses.
In my small case, it is shared with networked communities. I look into past eras for a lost history of beauty. One which is deeper than the surface of what one can see. As a creator of 3D interactive environments I feel there is an opportunity to connect to artistic traditions of storytelling and craft through design. In virtual environments filled with non-verbal and multi-sensory narratives, design is about architecting the experience of interaction for the audience. This requires considering the entire aesthetic illusion. It is most important to ensure that the confrontation between audience and virtual world communicates the intended message but also allows imaginations to run wild. Beauty of the totality of the world an interactor experiences, concentrating on the big world and not just individual elements and not stopping at a pretty picture is essential to achieving these goals.